10th May 2005 Archive
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Dell seen as long-term risk to Cisco
Speck on the horizon
This story has expired from The Register's archive. You can now find it at its original location on the Forbes.com website: http://forbes.com/markets/2005/05/09/0509automarketscan03.html?partner=theregister.
Financial News 10 May 2005, 09:02
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Apple updates iTunes
Music Stores open in more countries, too
Apple has extended the reach of its iTunes Music Store to four more European countries and posted a new version of its iTunes jukebox software, the Mac maker said yesterday. The new iTunes application, version 4.8, coincides not only with new online music shops for Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, but the addition of …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 09:21
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Parents blame Vonage over girl’s death
911 failure
Voice over Internet Protocol provider Vonage is under fire in the US for failing to connect an emergency 911 call. VoIP firms have to warn new customers that the service does not link properly to emergency services. 911 calls from landlines in the US give the location of the phone to emergency services. A Florida couple are …
VoIP 10 May 2005, 09:24
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NTL flogs Irish cableco
Telewest merger step closer
NTL has flogged its cable business in Ireland, fuelling speculation that it is clearing the table to begin merger talks with Telewest. Yesterday evening the cableco announced it had sold its Irish business to UnitedGlobalCom for €325m (£222m). MS Irish Cable Holdings, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, will hold the stake on UGC's …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 09:31
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Apple iTunes sales sail past 400m
Nordic boost
Apple's online iTunes Music Store (ITMS) has sold more than 400m downloads. Tucked away in yesterday's press statement announcing new Nordic local ITMS operations, ITMS chief Eddy Cue said the company is now selling more than 500m songs a year. It passed the 350m mark last month. Since ITMS hasn't sold that amount yet, that …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 09:37
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TSMC, UMC April sales slump
Optimistic for second half?
Chip foundries TSMC and UMC expect to experience strong revenue growth during the second half of the year, according to reports in the Taiwanese press today. They'll need to. On the basis of their figures for April, released yesterday, the short-term prognosis is poor. TSMC said sales were up 7.43 per cent on March's total, to …
Channel Register 10 May 2005, 10:54
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Consumer sales and laptops fuel UK market growth
Business sales slow
Demand from consumers drove growth in the UK PC market in the first three months of 2005. The UK market grew by 14.8 per cent in the first quarter. Laptop sales grew by 29.8 per cent, driven by ongoing price cuts. Desktop sales grew by 8.3 per cent and x86 servers grew by just 5.1 per cent year on year. Ian Gibbs, senior …
PCs 10 May 2005, 10:59
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Scansoft and Nuance plan $221m merger
If you want to merge, say 'yes' after the tone
Speech recognition firms Scansoft and Nuance are to merge in a deal worth an estimated $221m. Scansoft will buy up all the outstanding Nuance common stock in a cash and shares deal. Nuance shareholders will get 0.77 Scansoft shares and $2.20 in cash for each Nuance share they own. This will see Scansoft issue around 28 million …
Applications 10 May 2005, 11:02
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AMD steals Q1 market share from Intel
VIA, Transmeta did too
The first three months of the year showed the usual minor adjustments to the world's x86-chip makers' market shares. AMD came out of Q1 2005 with 16.9 per cent of the x86 CPU market, up less than a third of a percentage point more than Q4 2004. Arch-rival, Intel, lost half a percentage point of market share between the same …
System Builder 10 May 2005, 11:07
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News on new eminister due 'shortly'
Dippy appointments
PM Tony Blair is still umming and ahhing about who should take the role of eminister following his post-election winning cabinet reshuffle. He's already rebranded the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as the catchy Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry (DPEI, pronounced dippy). Former energy minister Mike O' …
Public Sector 10 May 2005, 11:10
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Toshiba slams Blu-ray/ HD DVD convergence claims
'Unfounded and erroneous'
Claims that moves to unify the two key competing HD video disc formats are progressing to a successful conclusion are "unfounded and erroneous", Toshiba said today. Toshiba is pushing HD DVD. Sony is promoting Blu-ray Disc (BD). Both formats use blue laser light to increase the capacity of a DVD-sized optical disc sufficiently …
Storage 10 May 2005, 11:18
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Car virus myth debunked
Rumour crushed
Rumours that the Bluetooth systems of cars are at risk from infection from mobile phone viruses have been debunked. Anti-virus firm F-Secure tested a Toyota Prius and failed, despite exhaustive attempts, to infect the car's systems with variants of the infamous Cabir worm, the most wide-spreading piece of mobile code malware to …
Malware 10 May 2005, 11:22
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Jessops hit as digital camera sales bomb
Smile and say 'cheese'
The sale of digital cameras bombed in February according to the latest industry figures. While sales of digital cameras grew by 36 per cent in November they only managed a measly increase of 0.1 per cent in February. The sudden drop in demand has been highlighted by high street camera shop Jessops, which reported today that …
Peripherals 10 May 2005, 12:04
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Sage ups H1 profits
Lives up to 'boring' tag
Sage, the UK accountancy software specialist, increased profits by 16 per cent in the first half of the year. Sage made a pre-tax profit of £100m on sales of £381.6m in the first six months ended 31 March 2005. The firm is optimistic it can maintain growth for the rest of the year and is continuing to look for acquisitions. …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 12:07
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MARSIS experiment hit by delay
Boom time
Mission controllers are holding off deploying the second antenna boom of Mars Express's MARSIS experiment until they can explain an anomaly that ocurred during the unfolding of the first boom. The 20m-long boom is divided into 13 sections, so that it can fold into the space available in the craft. The Mars Express team in …
Science 10 May 2005, 12:11
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Shuttle debuts Media Center barebone PC
Black is the new black
Shuttle has launched a Media Center-ready barebone PC. "Barebone" means that it is designed for system builders or hardware geeks to complete the build by adding components – such as the processor. The memorably named XPC SB83G5M is a small form factor desktop PC, housed inside a black, brushed aluminium G5 chassis. This is …
System Builder 10 May 2005, 12:50
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VGASTORE opens doors
Video editing for the masses
A British veteran of the graphics card industry has jumped into the reseller market with his own online store to flog gaming and video editing kit. Richard Clark, who has served time at 3DSL, Nvidia, Advanc3d and ATI, calls his business VGASTORE. “I’m offering great prices and good after sales service - we’re getting the …
Channel Register 10 May 2005, 13:02
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Symantec false alert floors Macs
Anti-virus cure causes more harm than disease
A false positive in Norton AntiVirus (NAV) for Macintosh left many Apple fans fearful that their machines had become infected with a Trojan last week. The glitch - triggered by a rogue virus definition update - left Mac users running various versions of NAV for Mac under the false impression that their swap files were infected …
Software 10 May 2005, 13:19
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Epson P-2000 Multimedia Storage Viewer
Review The photographer's ideal media player?
The P-2000 looks like a pure indulgence when you take it from the box and turn it on for the first time. The 3.8in display is simply sublime. Looking a bit like a bloated PDA, the P-2000 contains a 40GB disk within its finely built, 14.7 x 8.4 x 3.1cm, 415g form, writes Doug Harman. A range of simple controls down the right- …
Reviews 10 May 2005, 13:41
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Multi-tier 'virtual' development is go
Comment VMware Workstation 5
There has been a lot of interest in virtual desktop systems over the last couple of years. It is worth recognising that, until recently, usage of such virtual workstation software has usually been limited to those with relatively well-developed IT skills. However, recent developments are opening up the potential use of such …
Operating Systems 10 May 2005, 13:44
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Is Siemens phone biz Korea bound?
Watch Pantech, say sources...
A report in Korea Economic Daily says that Pantech "has received a proposal" to buy the mobile division of Siemens. Is it for sale? - yes, according to most observers. But why won't anybody buy it? The company is not, on the face of it, a tempting deal. Siemens has been making, but barely selling, mobile phones since the first …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 13:44
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Consumer growth floats NTL's boat
Revs up, losses down etc
NTL reduced losses in Q1 on the back of improved demand for consumer services. The cableco today reported losses on continuing operations of £62.26m (Q1 04: £75.5m) on revenues of £517m (Q1 04 £513m) for the first three months of the year. The improved numbers were buoyed by NTL's recent acquisition of ISP Virgin.net and the …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 15:01
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Trend Micro boosts anti-spyware defences with Intermute buy
Sign of the times
Anti-virus specialist Trend Micro is buying InterMute, the US anti-spyware firm, for about $15m. Japanese-based Trend plans to offer InterMute's stand-alone anti-spyware products under the Trend Micro brand. It will also integrate InterMute's anti-spyware capabilities into its enterprise, small and medium business, and consumer …
Malware 10 May 2005, 15:06
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Fun on the daily commute with Wi-Fi and hacked PSPs
Letters Oh, and The Register en Esperanto estas confusing
This week we brought you news that 85 railway stations are going to get Wi-Fi hotspots courtesy of The Cloud. A commuter writes: Interested to read the article, and was interested to see Slough on the list, but I thought you might like a commentary from a business user who is itching to use WiFi on the railways but currently …
Letters 10 May 2005, 15:10
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Sun acquires oldSCO for $25m
Tarantella travels to Santa Clara
Sun Microsystems has bought SCO - or at least the company that used to be SCO - for $25m. Sun today announced its buy of Tarantella in a cash deal. Tarantella was once known as the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) before that company sold its operating system assets to Caldera in 2001, kicking off a world of hurt for Linux fans …
Operating Systems 10 May 2005, 16:37
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Power outage floors eBay
Service restored
eBay fell over today following a power outage at its main web host in San Francisco. A spokesman for the giant auction site said all of eBay's sites were hit by the three-hour downtime. In a statement the company said: "In the early hours of this morning, a primary hosting provider for eBay in the San Francisco Bay Area of …
Financial News 10 May 2005, 20:56
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Cisco source code theft part of 'mega-hack'
Root cause analysis
The theft of proprietary source code from Cisco Systems last year was part of a much larger attack that breached "thousands of computer systems", according to investigators. Hackers made off the secret blueprint for software that controls the flow of traffic on the internet when they broke into Cisco's network in May 2004 and …
Enterprise Security 10 May 2005, 20:58
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Microsoft fortifies monthly patches with interim advisories
Which is nice
Microsoft opened up a new line of communication to its customers on Tuesday, pledging to provide more authoritative information about incidents involving, and changes to, the company's products that could affect customers' security. The information will be distributed as needed in the form of security advisories, which will be …
Software 10 May 2005, 21:09
